


and i'm the king of second chances

by churb



Category: Pinky and the Brain
Genre: M/M, episode 9 broke my heart, it's fun you should try it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5306261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/churb/pseuds/churb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'll never really understand what you did.</p><p>As far as you're concerned, he doesn't need to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and i'm the king of second chances

**Author's Note:**

> HAHA BRAIN AND SNOWBALL HAD A VERY SAD ROMANCE ARC LMAO KILL ME
> 
> ye ah this is kinda,,,, pre billie i guess so forgive me for not including her lmaoo ALSO according to the comics pinky is pretty sexually active with like,,, everyone (and also into bdsm but that's not really something i should discuss) soo lmao no i'm not just a weird ass furry 
> 
> this shit is canon

You know a great deal about relationships.   
  
Not that that was particularly surprising. You'd been in enough. Not that you were shallow, or anything - as far as you were aware, you didn't play people. You considered yourself genuine and upfront and all the other things that relationships needed. It was just that for some reason, you could only really attract short term things.   
  
That, and maybe you  _did_ have a habit of sleeping around. You'd had a variety of girlfriends - maybe the occasional boyfriend, when you'd found someone willing. And one night stands, occasionally. You know your boyfriend now judges you for it. You can't say he's particularly wrong, whatever nicknames he's mentally branded you with.  
  
You also can't say that he particularly has a right to judge.  
  
Brain's ex boyfriend appears on the scene about two years into your knowing him and very early on into your relationship. He enters with a few well chosen words as his greeting (which, really, are more just insults at Brain as a person) and gloats about stealing one of his nightly schemes. You're not particularly concerned with this conversation until he tells him that you seem like a valuable asset.  
  
"You think  _Pinky_ would be an asset?" You hope he more means the mere fact of you being an asset rather than a person, as opposed to objecting to the part about you being valuable.  
  
Snowball's reply to this is "Anything I can take from you is an asset."  
  
That probably should have been your first warning sign.

=

He gets you alone one day and catches your attention.  
  
You don't want to talk to him. You tell him that you don't want to talk to him. You tell him that, really, you're not exactly allowed to talk to him. Which isn't wrong, but you don't always do what you're told.  
  
Leaning back against the bookcase, he offers you a hypothetical question. "If Brain told you to eat dirt, would you?"  
  
"He doesn't need to tell me that, does he." It's a weak comeback. It only succeeds in insulting yourself. You can't say you didn't try.  
  
Snowball puts an arm around you. He tells you that Brain doesn't care about you. He tells you that he doesn't need you, really. And you don't want to listen. You refuse to listen, actually. You tell him where to stick his fudge and-- well. No you don't. You start crying and run away. You'd have liked to tell him to fuck off, but the you in your head is a little more intimidating (and capable) than the you that you are.  
  
Never let anyone say you're not emotional. You can't help it.  
  
It bugs you.  
  
=   
  
Confidence is not something that comes easy to you.  
  
You obsfucate it, mostly; just like you obfuscate stupidity, for humour purposes, to vent your irritation, maybe just as it fits the moment, but this is different. You're sure that if you fake it enough, it'll come naturally. That's what all the websites say. You know people don't take you seriously. They think you're stupid. You're pretty sure Brain thinks you're stupid, despite all the times you've proved him wrong. At this point, you're not sure if your relationship is banter or whether he genuinely hates you as much as he lets on.  
  
You only act stupid because it's the role he puts you into. You only act stupid so you can tell him what you think without him fighting you about it.  
  
Of course he loves you. You're being ridiculous and oversensitive. But you can't help it. You're an emotional person, as hard as you try not to be. You care about things. Snowball tells you once that it's your downfall and you try not to listen.  
  
Brain's a hard nut, in cracking terms. Underneath, he's just as emotional as you. He cares about things just as much as you do. He's more insecure than you, somehow, and he tries so, so hard. But getting him to ever reveal that side of himself is probably just a little harder than breaking down a house with a toothpick and his unwillingness to ever tell you how he feels drives you insane.  
  
There's a reason you only get one night stands. Or a month, or two months; Pharfig lasted for six and that's the longest you'd ever had someone before Brain came along. You try not to think about this too much. You don't consider yourself particularly attractive. There must be  _something_ about you that people consider so sexually positive that you keep falling into bed with them, but you're damned if you know what it is.  
  
There's also something about you that people consider so unappealing that they never stay with you for longer than your refractory period.  
  
Sometimes, you lie awake and look him over. You look at Brain, and you look at him sleeping there (when he does, when you have the opportunity) and you wonder why the  _hell_ he's stuck at it for this long. What he's seen in you that all the others-- Pharfig, Winnie, Penny, fuck,  _Mel_ \-- all the rest of them didn't.  
  
You don't regret it but it makes you uneasy. And then Snowball tells you Brain's using you for his own wants and needs and you really, really shouldn't but you believe him.  
  
=  
  
Brain confirmed your suspicions at the Microsponge meeting and you go home with Snowball that night.  
  
He doesn't really give you a themepark. Instead, he pulls you aside and tells you not to be surprised. He tells you that he's certainly not.   
  
You don't quite know how to take this.  
  
There's something about Brain's ex boyfriend that makes you understand why he fell in love with him in the first place. There's something else that makes you understand why it never worked out. He hates you. He makes it obvious. He locks you in a room with infant toys and tells you to play quietly and not interrupt him.  
  
You tell him he has some kinks that he should probably work out. He ignores you.  
  
You stay there for a good month. You sit in your room with your toys and play with them idly sometimes for a lack of anything better to do. All you had from home was a snowglobe Brain gave you with a carefully constructed model of the lab inside. You have a feeling that he built it himself. It's precious to you.  
  
You wake up one morning to it smashed on the floor and you can't say you're surprised.  
  
So you stay, and Snowball works, and every time you try and give him an idea, however great you thought it was, he just bats you away, and you don't know how to impress him. He tells you he already has the world and needs little else.  
  
You ask him why you're still with him, then, if he doesn't need you, and he sends you back to your room.  
  
You're not sure if you've ever had anyone keep you around when they didn't need you before.  
  
=  
  
(He gives you a reason one day. It makes you sick to your stomach. You're a bartering tool, now. You don't have a shred of any other humanity left.)  
  
(You don't quite know how to take the realisation that you obviously have no other real value.)  
  
=  
  
Brain doesn't understand why you did it. As far as you're concerned, he doesn't need to.  
  
There's a lot that Brain doesn't understand about you.  
  
And you don't talk about it, not for a while, not when you get home that night and not for a good few nights afterwards. You're in bed, eventually, before either of you say a word. (Platonically, of course. You don't sleep together. You've never gotten that far. He refuses to discuss it. You understand. You know he hates his body and you know he hates the thought of getting so intimate with people that he can't hide behind anything. It's a scary concept. You're not sure why you're quite so comfortable with it yourself.)  
  
He flat out asks you why and you flat out tell him that you never quite feel good enough.  
  
Equality was all you wanted. It was all you ever wanted. All you ever wanted was to feel like you meant something. And shit, you're a labmouse, you're a labmouse living out your days in someone's fucking basement in the middle of Burbank and you don't matter to the world but god, fuck, you want to. And even if you can't matter to the world you at least want to matter to someone in it.  
  
Maybe this is why you keep pulling people?  
  
He tells you that he thinks you're very important and he's not sure why you'd ever think you're not. You decide he doesn't know you as well as he thinks he does.  
  
"At the very least, you're too good for Snowball." He drums his fingers on the makeshift mattress that he insists you only share out of necessity. The concept doesn't make you feel very loved.  
  
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" You're staring at the ceiling, at this point, keeping your face as blank as you can. "Because it's not."  
  
"It was." He says, and then, "I'm not sure why it didn't."  
  
You're not sure how to explain that you just feel like a pretty commodity. You're not sure how to bring up the fact that he called you an asset from his own mouth.  
  
You tell him goodnight and you go to sleep.  
  
=  
  
(You don't feel quite secure in your relationship until that one Christmas when he breaks down and smashes his machine and it's only when you end up in Hell that you have enough time to really think about what you're going back to.  
  
It makes you feel appreciated, knowing that he threw back his success so many times for you. It doesn't make you feel very good about yourself as a person, but you feel at least somewhat important to him, and that's what matters.  
  
Snowball dies, eventually, on the island, in the machine - not in physicality, but in a more mental sense, that's how you interpret it because you're a poetic (or maybe pretentious) fuck and there's symbolism and shit there, and Brain's shoulders drop and he goes so, so quiet, and when you get home he tells you he needs time to think. He goes off into his own corner of the lab and stays there and you think he's probably been crying when he comes back and you feel oddly guilty because your first, intrusive thought is whether he'd mourn you like that.  
  
You've never been good at empathy. Well. You're good at feeling empathetic, but you never know how to help. You can't compete with a first love, you guess.  
  
You don't want to compete with Snowball. You want to be another chapter, not a remake. One of those movie franchises where the Two is better than the first. You try so hard at it. You like to think he appreciates it, in an odd way, but you don't know whether it's that or whether he just needs someone to help him grieve.  
  
Either way, you're doing something right. You're semi important.  
  
You feel like you kind of need to settle for that.)  
  



End file.
